The Patron: Scott J. Hunter

how we build patronage into the work we do daily — I see this as the foundation for philanthropy with the next-generation of patrons

5 QUESTIONS WITH Scott J. Hunter, PhD

Professor, Psychiatry & Behavioral Neuroscience, and Pediatrics; Director of Neuropsychology, The University of Chicago Medicine and Biological Sciences, Pritzker School of Medicine

Chair, Advisory Board, DePaul Art Museum; Proprietor, BASEMENT: A Project Space; Collector of Contemporary Art and Independent Curator

Chicago, IL

Scott J. Hunter, PhD, specializes in pediatric neuropsychology and pediatric psychology. In the clinic and in his research, Scott focuses on the diagnosis and treatment of learning, developmental, and neurobehavioral disorders, with particular interests in the neuropsychological complications of medical illness and its treatment in pediatric patients, executive function development, subcortically-based neurodevelopmental disorders, and the identification of neurological and behavioral risk factors that contribute to developmental disabilities.

Scott is an expert in the neuropsychological and psychosocial aspects of many childhood-onset conditions, including learning disabilities, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), epilepsy, childhood cancers, hydrocephalus, neurofibromatosis and autism. He is also an expert on the impact environmental and socioeconomic factors have on neuropsychological development and disabilities; he has conducted federally and foundation supported research on HIV/AIDS across the lifespan of youth and homelessness and trauma, and their impact on neurocognitive development. He is co-author and co-editor of five books; has written numerous articles and book chapters on his research and clinical interests; and has given presentations based on his research findings at conferences around the world.

Scott is a respected collector of contemporary art, across mediums. His collection, while international in scope, has a particular focus on emerging to mid-career artists, specifically ones with a strong connection to Chicago, and who emphasize intersectionality and materiality in their work. Some of the artists represented in his collection include Elijah Burgher, Julien Cruzet, Amanda Williams, Candida Alvarez, Cauleen Smith, Theaster Gates, Matthias Dornfeld, Etel Adnan, Glenn Fogel, Roni Packer, Anthony Pearson, Cameron Spratley, Natoaka Hiro, William J. O’Brien, Christopher Culer, Brittney Leanne Williams, and Nicole Eisenman. Images of Scott’s collection follow the interview.

1. Tell me about your collecting philosophy.

A complicated question perhaps, as I think on where collecting for me sits at this time. I can say that there is an underlying method beneath my approach to collecting, which is tied to my life in Chicago and the opportunity this has provided me, given the wealth of amazing undergraduate and graduate programs for artists, residencies and artist support organizations, and world class museums and galleries, to explore a range of ideas, processes, and efforts that are being engaged across many disciplines of practice. I find that I am deeply drawn to supporting what is happening here in Chicago first and foremost - to discuss efforts that emerging to mid-career artists in particular are engaging with, and to then, through studio visits and meetings with local curators and gallerists, seek out the fruits of those efforts and confront them directly.

I am however not solely focused on Chicago, but also on how Chicago intersects with the broader artistic practices that are occurring internationally. I do travel as much as I can, both for work and pleasure, and I look at art wherever I travel. I have relatively regularly attended art fairs internationally, to consider what is happening at the moment, and I have taken advantage of my engagements with museum and arts programs in Chicago that I have support, both through board membership and broader philanthropy, to learn and build my knowledge about the breadth of practices that are being presented, and how they engage with a range of social justice and identity considerations.

I began as a collector first exploring what has been described as “outsider art.” This was tied to my professional identity as a neuropsychologist, and my particular interest in visual languages and the processes involved in their representation. This built over time to a broader engagement in contemporary practices that have defined the 21st century. I collect in both depth and with breadth as a result. And through this, I have become more involved in opportunities to engage in curatorial efforts as a form of collecting as well, including through opening a project space in the basement of my home, where I can foster explorations by artists I am interested in, and with whom I have developed close relationships as a result.

2. How can collectors and patrons most effectively drive change in the arts?

As a collector, I have come to see my role first and foremost as a patron – as someone investing in the explorations and imagination of the artists I am introduced to, and who I choose to then bring into my life, through their work. It is the work of being a patron that for me defines what can drive change; to see that my best opportunity to building forward the arts is to in fact make a commitment to the practices of visual artists, musicians and composers, and to promote their work as a continued presence in our cultural lives. Collecting becomes ultimately a relational consideration – one tied to a recognition that bringing work into one’s home also means thinking about how to sustain the lives of the artists making that work. This builds and sustains the ecosystem required for art and artists, and the networks that ensure their continued presence.

The process of collecting for me became very quickly one of a broader commitment, financially and through a sharing of my time, to the community of artists and the programs that support their efforts. I did this both in the realm of the visual arts, as well as with contemporary music. As invited, I joined patron boards of the programs and institutions I was most interested in; this allowed me to learn what was required to support programming, and how to become a person directly involved in philanthropic efforts. Fundraising efforts became a particular focus for me in fact. Ultimately, what also became clear was that we needed mechanisms within this process that were more than just singular in their focus – and with the mentorship of such people as Christine Watkins, with whom I served on the board for the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), and one of the co-founders and then director of ICE, MacArthur Foundation Genius Award grantee Claire Chase, I learned how to think simultaneously about the present and the future in terms of organizational and community goals for support in cultural institutions. I began to think both of the organization and its needs, and myself, as an active potential influencer – even as someone not wealthy, there was much I could engage with and provide.

This has led me in particular to see that it is truly the process of collaborative effort that brings forth change, and enhances support. How to bring the organizations to community, and how to use community as a conduit for building new efforts and opportunities that will bring breadth and depth of interest. How artists and their communities, both in terms of those they share practices with, but also those who they seek to engage, can work collaboratively to build new foundations and strengthen those older ones that still serve a strong purpose.

3. Based on your experience, what improvements should be made to arts funding systems, strategies, and processes?

An excellent question, in fact one that I am wrestling with regularly in my role as the Advisory Board Chair with DPAM. I believe that one of our greatest challenges now is building a broader sustainable mechanism for supportive giving, by a wider range of cultural consumers. And doing so while supporting and encouraging a broadening of those with the means for directed philanthropy to better see giving as a life commitment - one of shared ownership and responsibility for ensuring the continued strong presence of artistic efforts that both deeply engage and challenge us simultaneously. One way I believe this has taken root locally here in Chicago is the cross fertilization of practice and social justice efforts; to see the arts as an expression of our desire for a diverse community that is strongly representational. And by utilizing social media as a key means for promoting that effort – across and beyond traditional communities.

We on the Advisory Board at DPAM are currently discussing how to build our board as a better representation of the communities that situate across the city, as a means for strengthening funding efforts and the systems that support them. Attracting small donors is one effort at play, where contributions to acquiring works, or commissioning new artistic efforts and curatorial experiments, can take place more organically. This is coupled with the need to build deeper partnerships across institutions, and with foundations and community networks; to see the efforts needed to bring cultural programming, exhibitions, and workshops and collaborations as ones that are not unitary to a particular organization.

One of the things that happened for me over time through my efforts in arts philanthropy is that I came to see that my role as a patron was one that was best engaged at a hyper local level – tied to the varied levels of production and support that are needed to ensure that artistic practices can be supported across a range of institutions and programs. It isn’t just working with one level of programming that is key – such as contributing to one board, or focusing on one institution explicitly – it actually becomes an effort at looking at what is needed at the foundational level once an artist or musician leaves their initial school/conservatory based training, and the organizations that provide residencies and exhibition opportunities, and then fostering the career building through support of these base programs and opportunities. As a result, I have felt that my best efforts were ones that engaged the systems and the funding mechanisms that supported these programs and project spaces, across the early life of the artists they engage. I believe this is one of the key steps that is needing a strong focus in patronage.

Lastly, this work must be incredibly intersectional – where we engage across cultural, ethnic, religious, gender, and racial communities simultaneously. This does mean working outside the traditional mechanisms that have been more siloed – and reaching across the communities and diving into an understanding of their own focus too. Drawing in across communities, and then building deeper collaborations cross institutionally, strikes me as the means for increasing who becomes a patron, and activates a wider view of who becomes any level of supporter.

4. What is the best role for the cultural sector as we re-imagine our systems, specifically with regards to wealth, power, and equity?

There is a significant need for developing more direct and effective opportunities for collaboration within the cultural sector across the constituencies that engage and produce art. We are at a pivotal moment regarding how to directly confront disparities and to work on a new method for fostering artistic engagement separate from the underlying pressures for capital. This is in fact where philanthropy comes to a turning point: how to allow for a more equitable process of both giving and fostering levels of support, for programming, for artistic efforts and production, for workshopping ideas and efforts across these communities.

As someone whose methodologies as a researcher have moved towards participatory practices, where those who are being engaged to help us learn are considered equal in the process – I believe that is in fact a model that situates great opportunity within the artistic communities, be they visual arts, music, dance, theatre. We are in a moment where what has been traditionally thought of as the process for giving is able to be altered and extended; grant making as an example can become a participatory engagement that allows greater collaborative action with the groups seeking funding. It becomes a means for recognizing and confronting the power differentials, while also embracing a direct engagement with those who are most seeking support.

5. Arts Funders Forum (AFF)’s current research survey, "Next-Generation Cultural Philanthropy: Driving positive social transformation through arts funding," is on the intersection of the arts and the *UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)***, building off our key pillar that next-generation philanthropists care deeply about the impact their giving has on their communities and greater society. How do you see the connection between arts funding and social impact, particularly with regards to public health?

A brilliant question. Art making is in fact a known therapeutic process, across ages. It is also a means for wrestling with the thorniest of our societal concerns, be they racism, gender identity, sexuality, climate change, globalism. Creating is a deeply intersected process with research that is scientific and medical; and some fantastic work comes from artists who are pursuing ways of addressing the influence of disease and its conceptualizations.

As a member of ACT-UP during the key period of the AIDS crisis in the U.S., I was deeply engaged with how the artists involved were framing visually and conceptually the processes of resistance and direct confrontation, that drove the changes needed for getting research into the virus and its effects, and then the development of the drugs that were ultimately to save lives, as well as their access. I learned then, and have remained profoundly engaged by this necessary reliance on our artistic culture to shape, reframe, and challenge what is at its core our social and physical lives.

I believe that to commit as a patron and someone involved in philanthropy now is to be aware and engaged with the intersection of arts creation and social justice. At the public health level, it is about seeing that the best works engaging social practice are ones that recognize and confront population needs and requirements. Work by artists addressing directly racism and the profound inequities that exist within an apartheid system that defines U.S. health care, as we’ve seen in significant form with regard to Covid-19 this past 18 months, is work that when supported and effectively moved into the public sphere, directly confronts injustice and its impact. I use this work as a representation of social conscience when I lecture. And as I move from academia this Fall into a role as a scientific expert in the pharmaceutical industry, I will be paying close attention to how to build partnerships between these organizations and the efforts that are being made to address these inequities. That means bringing supported artists and programs into the dialog and as guides to where change must happen. I see this as the foundation for philanthropy with the next-generation of patrons – how we build patronage into the work we do daily. For health care in particular, this means thinking of both representation and new challenges for research, that take artists' knowledge and their efforts into the dialog.

***Scott J. Hunter, PhD****, specializes in pediatric* *neuropsychology* and pediatric psychology. In the clinic and in his research, Scott focuses on the diagnosis and treatment of learning, developmental, and neurobehavioral disorders, with particular interests in the neuropsychological complications of medical illness and its treatment in pediatric patients, executive function development, subcortically-based neurodevelopmental disorders, and the identification of neurological and behavioral risk factors that contribute to developmental disabilities.
*Scott is an expert in the neuropsychological and psychosocial aspects of many childhood-onset conditions, including learning disabilities,* *attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)*, *epilepsy, childhood cancers,* *hydrocephalus*, *neurofibromatosis* and autism. He is also an expert on the impact environmental and socioeconomic factors have on neuropsychological development and disabilities; he has conducted federally and foundation supported research on HIV/AIDS across the lifespan of youth and homelessness and trauma, and their impact on neurocognitive development. He is co-author and co-editor of five books; has written numerous articles and book chapters on his research and clinical interests; and has given presentations based on his research findings at conferences around the world.
Scott is a respected collector of contemporary art, across mediums. His collection, while international in scope, has a particular focus on emerging to mid-career artists, specifically ones with a strong connection to Chicago, and who emphasize intersectionality and materiality in their work. Some of the artists represented in his collection include Elijah Burgher, Julien Cruzet, Amanda Williams, Candida Alvarez, Cauleen Smith, Theaster Gates, Matthias Dornfeld, Etel Adnan, Glenn Fogel, Roni Packer, Anthony Pearson, Cameron Spratley, Natoaka Hiro, William J. O’Brien, Christopher Culer, Brittney Leanne Williams, and Nicole Eisenman.

From L top down: Kate Levant, Anthony Pearson, William J. O'Brien, Julien Cruzet (3 pieces - large photo left, small painting to right, and foreground sculpture), JP3, kg (Karolina Gnatowski), Tony Lewis, Victoria Fu, Nazafarin Lotfi, Erin Jane Nelson, Emma Robbins

Counterclockwise from top: Gotscha Gozalishvilli, Theaster Gates, Iris Bernblum, Sanaz Sohrabi

The Path Forward interview series, an initiative of MCW Projects LLC, investigates how cultural and philanthropic leaders are re-envisioning the future of the arts.

Expanding the next generation of cultural philanthropists, advocates, and audiences